Architect urged mint to employ good cents

Monday

Sep 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMSep 29, 2008 at 1:59 AM

Earl Wallace Henderson doesn’t give up easily. As a fledgling architect, “Wally” Henderson designed the restoration of the Old State Capitol in the 1960s, when skeptics said it couldn’t be done. Now, 40 years later, Henderson has triumphed again. Thanks to him, the building he saved will appear on millions of commemorative pennies due to be issued next year.

Bruce Rushton

Earl Wallace Henderson doesn’t give up easily.

As a fledgling architect, “Wally” Henderson designed the restoration of the Old State Capitol in the 1960s, when skeptics said it couldn’t be done.

Now, 40 years later, Henderson has triumphed again. Thanks to him, the building he saved will appear on millions of commemorative pennies due to be issued next year.

Given the choice between a penny featuring Lincoln holding a book or Lincoln standing outside the Old State Capitol, the director of the U.S. Mint went with the book last spring. Lots of insiders didn’t like it.

“It was just a young man standing at a desk that had no meaning,” said Marilyn Kushak, chairwoman of the Illinois Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

The decision, disclosed to a committee of the national Abraham Lincoln Bicentennnial Commission in May, was supposed to be final.

“Our committee was disappointed, but how can you fight the U.S. government?” committee member Julie Cellini wrote in an e-mail to The State Journal-Register. “So everyone pretty much gave up. Everyone except Wally.”

The more Henderson thought, the angrier he got. After all, the penny was supposed to depict Lincoln’s years in Illinois.

“I wake up in the middle of the night saying, ‘This is the most ridiculous (expletive) thing I’ve ever seen,’” Henderson recalled. “This could be anybody in the world looking at Playboy magazine anywhere in the world. It had nothing to do with Illinois.”

Appropriately, it was June 6 — D-Day — when Henderson had his first showdown with the mint. It came during a conference call with a mint official who was supposed to brief committee members on the planned coins.

“The mint representative is some woman who comes on strong — wouldn’t let you get a word in edgewise,” Henderson recalled. “I finally got a word in edgewise. She said, ‘It’s impossible — once we’re on track, we can’t reverse this thing.’ I was really riled up. I could have strangled her.

“There was only one way to get it done, and that was to go over her head.”

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was the only person who could overrule the director of the mint. Henderson started making calls and writing letters, waxing eloquent and enlisting support from such heavies such as U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Peoria, and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois.

A penny might not be worth much, but it is forever — and almost everyone in the nation has at least one, Henderson said in his pitches.

“He talked about how civilizations come and go, but their coins remain, thousands of years later, that coins survive floods and fires and wars,” wrote Cellini, who sits on the state and national Lincoln bicentennial commissions and so heard Henderson’s plea twice. “Each time I heard his argument, it seemed stronger. More important. Worth fighting for.”

Henderson convinced the bicentennial commissions, which wrote letters to Paulson asking that the decision be reversed. He also swayed Durbin, pointing out that Henderson had been appointed to an advisory committee that’s helping shape the observance of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.

“I said, ‘You asked me to be an adviser — I’m advising you that they’re screwing Illinois with this coin,’” Henderson said.

Durbin, who refers to Henderson as “my buddy,” called Paulson personally.

“I said, ‘I’ve got to ask you a favor,’” Durbin recalled. “He said he’d think about it. He called me back and said, ‘Some people will be unhappy with me, but I’m going to do it.’

“Wally Henderson deserves the credit for inspiring me,” Durbin said.

Officially, the credit goes to the national Lincoln bicentennial commission, so far as the mint is concerned.

“The alternative design was specifically based on updated information the United States Mint received from the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission in which it felt the aspect better conveyed the story of Abraham Lincoln’s professional life in Illinois,” mint spokesman Michael White wrote in an e-mail to The State Journal-Register.

But those who saw Henderson at work think otherwise.

“Wally brings that sense of promoting those things that are worth promoting,” Kushak said. “He’s relentless.

“I’m glad we think alike.”

Bruce Rushton can be reached at (217) 788-1542 or bruce.rushton@sj-r.com.

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